Las Vegas shooter ‘doted’ on girlfriend but may have kept secrets

Marilou Danley said that two weeks ago, Stephen Paddock had got her a ticket to visit family in the Philippines and had wired her money to purchase a house while she was there.

worldUpdated: Oct 05, 2017 14:59 IST

Reuters Reuters

Man lights candles at a makeshift memorial near the Mandalay Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 3, 2017, after a gunman killed 58 people and wounded more than 500 others, before taking his own life, when he opened fire from a hotel on a country music festival. (AFP)

At the casino in Reno, Nevada, where they met several years ago, Stephen Paddock was a “big fish” and Marilou Danley a petite hostess.

Danley, 62, returned to the United States on Tuesday and was being interviewed by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Los Angeles. Authorities have called her a “person of interest.”

Two officials briefed on the case said that as of midday Wednesday, there was no indication she was aware of Paddock’s plans.

Danley said in a statement read by her attorney Matt Lombard in front of the FBI’s office in Los Angeles that she had no advance warning of the attack and that Paddock had sent her out of the country, telling her the money was to purchase a home in the Philippines for her family.

This undated photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Marilou Danley. Girlfriend of the active shooter in the Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017, incident, Danley, 62, returned to the United States from the Philippines on Tuesday night and was met at Los Angeles International Airport by FBI agents, according to a law enforcement official.
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Eric Paddock also said Danley might not be able to give investigators any clues.

“Mary Lou (sic) is absolutely the closest person to Steve,” the brother told Reuters in a series of text messages elaborating on their relationship. “My fear is that he manipulated around her, and she’s not going to know any more than anyone else does.”

Danley has not been charged in the case and told her family she has a “clean conscience” following the Las Vegas attack, her brother said in an interview with ABC News in the Philippines.

The portrait emerging of her stands in stark contrast to that of Paddock.

While he had few friends and kept to himself, Danley is warm and outgoing, according to media interviews with family, neighbors and friends.

Danley was born in the Philippines and moved to Australia where she married and became an Australian citizen, according to the Gold Coast Bulletin, an Australian newspaper.

She was married for more than 20 years to her second husband, Geary Danley, and the couple moved to Nevada when they retired, the New York Times reported.

He was also allergic to many pills and was unable to renew his pilot’s license — he had flown planes since he was a teenager — because he could not take the pills needed to reduce his blood pressure.

At casinos where he was a regular, he was such a valued customer that staff obliged his requests to wash his room’s carpet with plain water.

“The reason Mary Lou looks so plain in that picture they keep posting of her is because for him she would not wear perfumes or hair sprays or anything with scents in it because it affected him,” Eric Paddock wrote, referring to a passport-style photo of Danley that has been widely circulated by news outlets.